Hey there! This is TOP episode 243. How to Activate Your Vocabulary?
Are you tired of lacking confidence when speaking English? Does it block you from achieving your true goals? This podcast is the place for you. This is Teacher Ola Podcast. My name’s Ola Mierniczak and I empower English learners to become confident speakers. The key to fluency is in your pocket. You’ll boost your vocabulary, brush up your grammar and improve your pronunciation. Enjoy your journey to fluency!
Hello and welcome! Thank you so much for pressing play! Today we’re going to discuss active and passive vocabulary. But first let me invite you to another series of three webinars! I’m thrilled because it’s gonna be so awesome! 19, 20, 21 may we’ll be learning how to become fluent in English. Please sign up now, go to teacherola.com/webinar. It’s all free. You know my webinars, you know the formula. Three days of knowledge that you cannot miss! We’ll be talking about memorizing words, about making mistakes, gaining more confidence and how to improve your listening skills. I’m excited! Once again: it’s teacherola.com/webinar. And now today’s episode.
I hear you: ‘Hey Ola, I see words, I hear words, I know what they mean but I can’t use them myself, I can’t use them spontaneously, naturally. I’m not fluent!’ Well, my dear! Being fluent is not that! It’s not the ability to use all the words you know. Let’s break it down today and let’s learn what passive and active vocabulary are. Today you’ll find out why it is completely normal to understand words and not be able to use them.
Passive vocabulary. What is that? Do I need it? Yes, you need a broad passive vocabulary because you need to understand people and texts. These are the words that you understand when you read them or when you hear them but you are not able to use them while speaking or writing. Every word, phrase, fixed phrase, idiom, phrasal verb, all the new vocabulary you learn becomes passive vocabulary. Not immediately, but if you read or listen a lot your passive vocabulary gets bigger. The bigger the better. That’s a forgone conclusion. Vast passive vocabulary makes it possible for you to understand films, conversations, music, books, everything. Everything.
Now. What’s active vocabulary?
Active vocabulary are all the words you can use while speaking or writing. It’s much much smaller. It will always always be considerably smaller in comparison with passive vocabulary. Words can become parts of your active vocab only after practice. Only after you’ve made use of them. Not just once. Multiple times.
Passive vocabulary is like a reading room in a library, you have access to the words, but you can’t use them outside the room. Whereas active vocabulary are the books you can borrow, take home with you, you can use them. I hope this example does illustrate the difference.
I know that you want to activate all the passive words in your brain, you are my heroes, I honestly, no sarcasm here! I honestly admire that in you. I know you’re ambitious and you want to express yourself fully, you want to be able to use all the words there are. 100%. The good news, I think it’s a piece of good news, you will never activate all the words from your passive repository. It’s impossible because new words constantly enter your repository. All the time, whenever you read or listen, new words jump into your brain. This process never ends. New words appear all the time. It’s estimated that in the modern world a new word is created every 98 minutes. A brand new word. Each year, an estimated 800 to 1,000 new words are added to English language dictionaries (in the 20th century alone, more than 90,000 words have been added) Can you believe that? Dictionaries barely keep up with the ever-changing language. Terms related to technological advancements, social trends, popular culture, scientific discoveries, and other aspects of contemporary life. You will never learn ALL the vocabulary there is. New words pop up all the time, plus old words and sayings gain new meanings. Language is alive. Accept it.
Ok, so that’s an important point, to take off this burden, to shake it off. It’s an illusion. Drop that unrealistic expectation to activate all the vocabulary you know passively. Passive vocabulary is there for a reason.
The problem is if your active vocabulary is too narrow to make you feel comfortable speaking. To make you feel confident. So in this episode I’m going to give you 3 tips on how to activate your passive knowledge. Not all of it, ok? We’ve already said that it’s an unrealistic expectation but you can and you should activate the vocabulary, that group of words and phrases you need for speaking. Additionally, please know that this is absolutely natural. It’s like that across all languages! Every speaker of any language understands more words than they can use. In Polish you also know many more words than you use in your daily life. Yes! So-called native speakers understand more than they can use. So, how to activate your vocab, here are my 3 action steps, practical tips. Let’s go.
ONE. Don’t learn new words. Today’s episode is not about how to memorize new words and how to use them actively. Nope. It’s about learning to use words you already know. So if you’re here I assume you have a problem with expressing yourself, with fluent communication. That means you need to activate your passive vocabulary. You don’t need more words, you need to use the words you already know. They might be easy words, basic expressions, good! Humble yourself. Put those so-called ‘easy’ expressions on flashcards. You need to activate them first! For instance, What do you say when someone asks you this question: ‘How are you?’ What? Don’t you have an answer ready? Practice that! For instance, I’m good, thanks, you? Or: Can’t complain. Or: Could be better. Practice out loud. Say it out loud! Always, every flash card. Now, next:
TWO. Spaced repetition with flashcards. Ok, so if you need to learn more about spaced repetition go to another episode of Teacher Ola Podcast, episode 149, it’s titled: Remember what you learn, spaced repetition. You can also google teacher ola podcast spaced repetition and you’ll find episode 149. But, in a nutshell, spaced repetition is a system of repeating vocabulary or grammar, or anything, it applies to any knowledge you need to absorb not only languages. Medicine students use it for instance. You can use ANKI application for it. Anki applies spaced repetition and you don’t have to think about it, just start the app and do your thing. The problem is you need to prepare your own flashcards. So, now. The tip is to prepare flashcards with words you really need. Don’t place on the flashcard all the vocabulary there is. Just focus on what you really need. Do you need English for business? Finances? Travel? Small talk? What do YOU need English for? For work? What industry? Legal English? Music English? Think about all the situations you get to speak and make flashcards with the words YOU really need. Please please remember you need to put the whole sentence on the flashcard. The words won’t cut it. It won’t suffice. You need to see how this word works in a given context. In various tenses. Make sentences in past, present, future, in conditionals, with modal verbs, in passive voice, in reported speech, use indirect questions, MAKE QUESTIONS all kinds of questions. That’s very important, direct, indirect, subject, object, tag questions. See? This way not only do you learn vocabulary but also you repeat your grammar. Good. And go back to your flashcards every day. Not all of them everyday. In specific order. The words you don;t know well are repeated more often. Please listen to episode 149 to learn details.
THREE. Prompt. Speaking is like riding a bike. You can’t learn it in theory. At one point you have to grab that bike and have a ride. You’ll fall down a few times, you’ll make some mistakes. Sometimes you’ll fall even when you’re advanced. Mistakes are a natural way of learning, we don’t know any other way of learning. We learn by doing, so do it. Speak. But what? Here come the prompts. So what I want you to do is make use of your beautiful imagination. Imagine yourself speaking English at the airport, at a restaurant, in a meeting, in a zoom call, at work, in the office kitchen. Wherever you need English. Let’s say today I want to practice speaking with my colleagues in that kitchen in the office. Ok, let’s think, they always ask me about my weekend. Ok, I’ll prepare something. And imagine you are having this conversation now and prepare the sentences. Say them out loud. In the shower, while walking, while cooking, while running, while cleaning, before bed. All the tips I’m giving you right now can be developed and explained in detail. I don’t have space for it now, but please trust me. There is a reason why speaking out loud to yourself WHILE walking outside or just before bed is good for your memory. Just trust Teacher Ola, ok? Please. You’ll see radical improvement in the way you speak. Radical and fast improvement but you need to do it every day. Honestly, the hardest part is to remember to do it. That’s why I say make prompts. Prompts should appear on your fridge, on your mirror, on your laptop. Prompts depend on you and your big goal, but it could be:
- make a small talk with a colleague
- make a small talk with a client from the UK
- talk about the weather
- give a presentation
- make 4 different conditional sentences with the word ‘ultimate’
- describe what you’re doing right now
- talk about your big goals
- talk about your arrangements for this week
- make sentences with such and such words
- use such and such idiom
- list all the words that you associate with the word ‘lettuce’
Extra tip. Record yourself. Audio or video. Extra extra tip: start a podcast or a youtube channel. It’s harder to speak to the camera or speak to the microphone than it is to speak to a real person. It really is! If you do that, if you commit yourself to speaking and recording a podcast episode on any topic you want, if you do that consistently, every Thursday you’ll fly! Why? Because you’ll do it regularly, because you’ll go out of your comfort zone, because you can relisten and improve. Because you’ll do something very very difficult and after THAT speaking with people will be a breeze. A walk in the park. Easy peasy. Go back to episode 0 of this very podcast. Teacher Ola Podcast and see how much I improved my speaking skills in those 5 years. You can do it too.
ADDITIONAL TIP NUMBER FOUR. I know I promised three, but this one is important and I need you to hear this. Read out loud. Do it because reading is one of the best things you can do for your English. While reading you get to see the words and grammar in contexts. You see the collocations, connections, ways the words are used. Who uses them? In what situations? Read books with many dialogues, read books for teenagers, they have many dialogues. Young adults, ok? See how the characters react, how they respond, what questions are asked in what situations. Very important. But you’ll get extra points for reading out loud. Do it do it do it. You can do it with me. Currently I’m reading a book in English on TikTok. I do live reading every day at about 9 pm. Usually I show up before 9 pm, like 10 ten to nine. See you there. Nevertheless! Read out loud.
Time for your practice. As always in this podcast I’ll ask you now to listen carefully and then repeat the sentences out loud. Let’s go!
Today you’ll find out why it is completely normal.
Do I need it?
The bigger the better.
That’s a forgone conclusion.
It will always be considerably smaller in comparison with passive vocabulary.
I hope this example does illustrate the difference.
This process never ends.
It’s estimated that in the modern world a new word is created every 98 minutes.
Can you believe that?
New words pop up all the time.
Drop that unrealistic expectation.
I hope you enjoyed this lesson and you learned something new. I hope you feel inspired to take action now. Don’t leave it for later, make a decision now and implement new habits today! If you like my work please leave a review or a like or a heart that will massively help me. Thank you!
Sign up for my free training! Go to teacherola.com/webinar and save your spot. I’ll teach you how to speak English with ease.
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I’ll be back next week. Stay fearless, say it out loud and take care! I’m your teacher, Teacher Ola, and you were listening to Teacher Ola Podcast. Bye for now.